Image Courtesy of Warner Bros. Entertainment, Mattel, LuckyChap Entertainment, Mattel Films & Heyday Films.
While we are eagerly waiting for Greta Gerwig’s movie to finally release on July 21st, the internet has spoken: It’s Barbie’s world and we are all just living in it. She is everything and everything is a Barbie meme. Even the opposing comeback of quiet luxury – Gwyneth Paltrow’s Barbie lost half a day of ski, Shiv Roy’s Barbie is a corporate girlboss and he’s just Kendall. Women in their power suit, dressing for success and a seat at the table is certainly nothing new, if anything it has been the predominant sartorial strategy to climb the career ladder.
In Shivan’s case it feels a bit off at times, just a little less at ease than her brothers, but there is no doubt that it is an expression of power and strength. What about the ongoing obsession with pink though? It does feel very familiar too, picking up the hyper-feminine aesthetic of y2k, once embodied to perfection by Paris Hilton (as she recently put it: “I’m not a dumb blonde. I’m just really good at pretending to be one”).
A few weeks ago, the American late-night talk show host of „Ziwe“ Ziwe Fumudoh was a guest lecturer at Harvard Law School. What, like it’s hard? Unfortunately Showtime announced last month that the show is cancelled after just 2 seasons. Rumor has it that the surprising cancellation may have to do with recents changes at the top of the network. However, Ziwe’s style and spirit persists. Everything she’s been doing feels distinctively different than the traditionally male late-night spaces we’ve come accustomed to.
Image Courtesy of Showtime & Ziwe Fumudoh.
She is wearing huge faux fur hats, cute tweet pastel costumes and is asking her big name guests like Fran Lebowitz, Emily Ratjakowski and Gloria Steinem blunt and uncomfortable questions of race. Despite the discomfort – she recited Cardi B’s WAP lyrics to Gloria Steinem and asked white feminist Alyssa Milano how many black friends she has – there is a prevailing aspect of humor and fun. Maybe it’s because it’s such a pleasure to watch Ziwe create her own universe and the images and stories she wants to see on social media and TV. The show’s set looks like a cotton-candy barbiecore dream of the waiting room in „Twin Peaks“.
Barbiecore does feel different this time around, it is much more intersectional, as you can also see in Gerwig’s cast. In other news: just last week Mattel presented a Barbie with Down syndrome. It seems that everybody who wants to can jump on the joyous Barbie express on the way to advance its legacy.
In the opening scene of the trailer Helen Mirren’s Barbie narrates, under the historical symphony of Strauss’ „Also sprach Zarathrustra“, how a new era dawned upon mankind or should I say womankind. It was the year zero when Barbara Millicent Roberts was born (this Barbie is a Pisces). The staged intro almost resembles a religious awakening. At the centre of it: the color pink. BB (before Barbie) little girls used to play exclusively with baby dolls. Playing with a grown up woman doll meant the crucial change from practicing for the sole option of motherhood to a variety of futures with an own agency. After all, Barbie is busy, she had over 200 careers and not just after she split up with Ken in 2004. Today she is selling NFTs with Balmain and Valentino dedicated a whole collection to the powerful color for FW22/23.
Image Courtesy of Warner Bros. Entertainment, Mattel, LuckyChap Entertainment, Mattel Films & Heyday Films.
Like most legends Barbie has been as fascinating as complicated. With her impossible proportions and beauty ideals for teenagers to aspire to on the one hand and her contagious zest for life on the other. What if Barbie is just a realistic and liberating representation of what it often means to live in a patriarchal world. It is okay to not get it right 100% of the time.
What if she is the bad feminist we didn’t know we had all along? A bit too superficial and influenced by societal standards, but nevertheless making her own choices, living her live to the fullest and while she is at it, she is having fun and enjoying the things that make her happy. She is literally everything. Like all us: the good, the bad and the sometimes contradictory. What if ironically Barbie is cutting us all some slack from the impossible expectations of being perfect. Like Roxane Gay confesses in her essay collection „Bad Feminist“: „I used to say my favorite color was black to be cool, but it is pink-all shades of pink“.
In the trailer Margot Robbie seems to leave Barbieworld without losing her Barbie spirit, we don’t know yet why, but this feels like a fantastic direction already.